I know this is kind of strange. Call it an "effort poem"?

and you think you know what politics is

and you think politics is all about voter registration and issues

war, abortion, taxes, global warming, and medicare

you think politics is all those candidates running for office

and you think you know what politics is

let me tell you what politics is

politics is a dollar in my pocket and a rock in my head

politics is a glass eye, shell shock, and schizophrenia

an impenetrable wall that eludes your touch

politics is a big advertisement for coca-cola classic

and the drum beat of the daily news

and just as history is the chronology of war

politics is the seismic movement of power

you feel it and they tell you everything about it that is

of no possible value

politics is two guys slam drunk in some local dive

not knowing what society they live in or who they're talking to

because politics is not what you see on the six o'clock news

politics is all the reasons it got all fouled up in the first place

politics is why they misappropriated your money

politics is all of t. s. eliot's "arguments of insidious intent"

where words are cast about like frisbees in the air

words like liberty equality freedom justice patriotism

the meanings bleached out by the sun

and contorted by misunderstanding and abuse

illiterate we are in our native tongues

politics is the mish and the mash of compromise

it' s the give and take of his opinion and hers

politics is the confluence of the "is"

with the "what ought to be"

real-politick is the reality of life as opposed to the dream

it is life's approximations instead of the ideal

and there come a man and woman of the caves and jungles

displaced just a little

to occupy the high rise office structures and condominiums

they have shed the mask of thickened hide and heavy fur

and don the satin sheen of this new hairless breed

clinking cocktails

sliding loosely into believing in ideologies

politics is the enaction of survival of the fittest

politics is the play of those best equipped for this world

with all the tools endowed by God

and played-out without any knowledge of His existence

politics is getting along with life

while watching those less fortunate fall by the wayside

and you watch and pray

to save your guilty soul

and spare yourself the others' fate

politics is not a two party game

structured opposition democracy and government in the making

politics is the color of our lives

politics is what we settle for

politics is the yin and the yang of our work and our play

of life and its introspection

politics is a stale joke in a smoke-filled room

oh! i lost my wallet on the other street corner!

but the light is so much better over here

politics is a lighthouse beacon shining far out

into the fog-shrouded night

and politics is a baby-blue tinted disposable contact lens

on the eye of a potato